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| Lilian Dillon |
Every
Irish family has been touched by the great diaspora, losing loved-ones forever to
the grey funnel line across the rolling sea. Their stories are recalled in song
and poetry around the world. But some stories are less well-known and the tale
of Lilian Dillon, a small girl from Kilkenny who found herself orphaned in
Calcutta, is one.
I was recently doing family
history research for my sister-in-law Rachel Palmer from Devon. Rachel’s family
are from the southern counties of England, her ancestors’ origins ranging from
Suffolk in the east to Devon in the west, taking in London, Brighton and
various other towns and villages along the way. Rachel’s ancestors include some
fascinating characters including two ancestors with knighthoods, a Victorian
chemist who invented homeopathic remedies still on sale today and a journalist
who conspired with Harry Houdini to uncover fake mediums in Edwardian London.
Not far into my research I
came across two Scottish lines of Rachel’s tree but was not expecting to
discover Irish genealogy until Rachel’s Uncle Jan whispered to me that I should
look a little further …to India.
Rachel’s maternal line
includes a branch of families living in India, many working in the country’s gargantuan
railway network from the mid-1800s, who saw out the final years of rule of the
East India Company through the subsequent eight decades of rule by the British
Crown, (the Raj). Just like in Ireland, the history of British rule in India is
contentious, though what interests me is the impact of history on the microcosmic
lives of individuals.
One such individual was an Irish
girl named Elizabeth (aka Lilian) Dillon, who we discovered to have been Rachel’s
3 x great grandmother. Her story is remarkable, born in Kilkenny in 1849, as
the great hunger ravaged the country and its destitute population flocked to
the ports for steerage on America-bound ships, Lilian’s father Matthew took the
option of a career in the British army and joined an Irish regiment where he
became a captain.
From the Flight of the Wild Geese
in 1691 when Irish Jacobite forces left to serve in continental armies, Irish
soldiers gained a formidable reputation around the world. Ironically though not
surprisingly, Irish regiments were highly valued by the British army, fighting
in battles from Bunker Hill in the American Revolutionary War to the Charge of
the Light Brigade in the Crimean.
As Field Marshall Sir Henry
Wilson, a Longford born unionist said “…Jack Frost is the best recruiting sergeant
we have” and the East India Company having previously taken advantage of this principle
in the early 19th century, had actively targeted Ireland to recruit men
like Matthew Dillon with the promise of food, clothes and a roof over their
heads. Irish officers and soldiers, it is said, made a disproportionate contribution
to the 'steel frame' around which the Raj was built. There were nearly as many
Irish men in the Bengal Regiment as there were English, Welsh or Scots. In the
1850s enlistment to the army was for a minimum of 21 years, so when soldiers
were sent to India they often took their wives and children with them.
The Indian Mutiny, also
called the 1st War of Indian Independence began in May 1857 when
Indian troops known as sepoys rose up against the rule of the British East
India Company. The mutiny quickly escalated into a civilian rebellion across
the central northern regions of India. Accounts of the atrocities on both sides
of the fighting make shocking reading. Much was made of the brutality of the rebels
not just towards besieged British soldiers but civilians too, especially women
and children, though this must be balanced against the violent retribution of the
British army.
It was in this rising that 8
year old Elizabeth Dillon saw her parents murdered and also lost her brother
Wentworth. Perhaps, like Rudyard Kipling’s hero Kim (an orphaned Irish military
child in India named Kimball O’Hara), little Elizabeth might have taken to the
roads as a vagabond, but we know that she was ultimately taken in by a Catholic
orphanage run by nuns in Calcutta where conditions though “harsh” were better
than starvation.
When Elizabeth was 19, the
nuns had her married to
an Italian opium and indigo planter named Dominic Rossetto. The couple had two
children, Frederick Rossetto (Rachel’s 2 x great grandfather) and his sister
Mary Angela. When Dominic died she married one Frederick Coaker but left him because
of his bad treatment of her son Frederick. Her third marriage to William
Robinson was happier and she had three more children.
From the unimaginable trauma of seeing her parents murdered
and losing her brother, brought up as an orphan amidst the poverty of 19th
century Calcutta, becoming a widow, then escaping an abusive second marriage, Lilian
Dillon survived to become a respected lady of Indian-European society. Her
descendants recalled her as a quiet, serious, but indomitable woman, a devoted matriarch to her family. Just like
Kipling’s fictional Kim, neither wholly British nor Indian, Lilian endured the struggles
of this vast land of contrasts and tensions to assert her own identity and
independence.
Lilian lived her final years in the comfort of a Calcutta
nursing home and died in 1921.
